Relaxing an often frightening atmosphere; allowing disorder and fear to evaporate; generating precise moves; softening and exciting all brain synapses… Minimalist electro and IDM music generally require both a time to relax in order to understand them, and ecstasy that is aroused by such an intellectual and complex art, but also a desire to dismantle all inherent mechanisms of the genre so they can be enjoyed more and more. Glitches are like living sparks and effective jolts placed in the tracks to create the most efficient electric shocks to let us enter this apparently cold and clever universe, but also emotional and wonderfully captivating moments. Italian composer Roberto Donato, aka Monade, offers us, thanks to his new record, Puni, an epiphenomenon which induces delicate and mesmerizing sensations, an inhibition of almost visual impressions caused by skin-crawling pleasures in melody, arranging and neverending experiments.

Ready to let his emotions speak instead of a cold electro mood, Monade wraps his tracks around ambient waves reminding us of Lawrence (87) or Boards Of Canada (Quibus), and never forgets how to create dark but captivating tones of sensory ecstasy (Thymes, Freq 1). Rhythms are rough, raspy and as scratchy as sandpaper, scraping dusty walls of sounds and abandoned buildings where adirty and muddy harmony plaster falls apart. One can hear the steps of spirits lurking around in empty and lonely corners, their screams echoing through the corridors in a final call for help, salvation and well-worn purity (Ak L). Thus, listening to the album is like contemplating a painting frame reminding us of the long lost hours spent in huge and ephemeral cities, a musical Babylon nobody dares to enter by passing majestic doors guarded by the leaders of the genre, but which has to be overcome to bring a new sensational point of view. Starting with the deliciously dark tune Little Birth and ending with the liquid track Vinics, the universe shining through Puni expands under pale veils and silk, torn apart but still showing an unexpected sweetness despite the corrosion of its most natural elements.

Because with this particular album, one is invited to contemplate the ageless struggle between nature and modernity. What is electronic and artificial (meaning, created by men), as one can notice on the beautiful album cover, faces leaves and ferns that do not want to be pixelated. Mixing two worlds in constant opposition to only keep their respective sources of beauty, Roberto Donato seems to be an environmental scientist locked in his lab, making use of new tools to play with the cells that can be manipulated to create an unknown plant. Let us not forget that Puni means ‘water of life’ and is an Italian Alpine river; and it is this movement, this river and its quiet or sometimes deafening noises, that the composer wishes to perform through his art. Thus, the meanders flowing in the LP run through the rocks, along shiny and dry lands, towards light and civilization to provide a living strength and an infinite energy. with only 11 tracks, Monade takes us to these virgin places and materializes them in the most admirable way.

Puni takes us back to the most evocative and moving electro roots. Therefore, one has to endlessly listen to it.

The freedom for musicians who already are deeply part of the independent medium can be found in their side projects, their attempts to explore different genres and styles. Some of them easily prove it in a kind of mainstream way (Radiohead) or more closely and subtly (The Walkmen), knowing that it is especially complicated to be able to propose something unexpectable, in opposition to a simple extension of the art they fit in. Grails’ and Lilacs & Champagne’s Emil Amos still goes on with Holy Sons, his own lo-fi project he has been taking care of for almost ten years. And his new album, The Fact Facer, contains every part of his tunes that sounds like an inner system, an emancipation of the bands he is playing with; as gray as intense, the record takes us towards the ultimate passage between life and forgiveness, between rationalism and madness, while sharing the depressive folk tones we will all be taken with.

The album is made of cold and clean, dismantling and sometimes acoustic tones (psychedelic impulses on Line Me Back Up, All Too Free), often close to the limit of electronic Arab Strap-like tunes (Selfish Thoughts). Freed from his creative chains but soon recaptured by a sneaky and artistic omnipotent demon, Emil Amos invokes transcendent stories that sound like a long and painful walk to the edge of madness (Long Days), or intimate, poignant and subversive delusions (Back Down to the Tombs) which inexorably possess each listener, decimating all of them to wrap them into its claws. The fearless composer opens the doors to his nocturnal world, a place of dark forests and melody in which a murmur calls for home to protect our souls and share all we can with them. Symbolized by the fertile ground of improvisation the artist endlessly creates, such a so-called tendency to make unexpected and incredible arrangements turns the LP into a source of information and condense, amazing tracks, or torn pieces of musical flesh waiting to be brought back together to help rebuild our broken hearts. Then, as the musician achieves his creative canvas thanks to the magnificent and soft song The Fact Facer, one remains impressed by his unclassifiable definition of folk music, his incomparable gift of himself to search for perfection into mental illness.

Thanks to this album, Emil Amos has decided to deprive himself of his own experience and let it flow like a current of tears hydrating the ghostly faces of his life. By remaining in the darkest recesses of his music, stretching the thread of his art to better cut it, he offers us a collection of long sharp blades, a tangle of furiously contained and sublime madness. While the pale faces of patients ready to be locked up suddenly become supplicant and experiencing the struggle between peace and insanity, The Fact Facer shows several ways to escape from a daily, boring life, each depending on the type of listening one will provide to tame it. Because it is another primary strength of the ultimate, difficult and feverish melancholy that takes every one of us as we truly are, without forcing us to follow a guideline but, as Eels‘s remarkable LP Electro-Shock Blues, opening an endless field of possibilities to feel safer. Thus, redemption and sharing, on stage or simply by hearing the songs on our own, can be reached only by passing through an ephemeral bridge to find a way out, and crossing it, while focusing on oneself, to see one’s personal and pure reflection.

The Fact Facer is a delicate and complex LP. It is a bittersweet, close to the edge but electrifying and deeply moving drama.

The band has been left alone in front of an opened door to the universe of progress and new horizons for their music, ready to go through the immediate desire to play with new sounds and learn how to perfectly perform their art to entirely appreciate it and reveal its huge potential. As two workaholics in constant need to experiment numerous ideas and find all ways to communicate their passion and talent thanks to their creations, Ooberfuse has to go on and prolong the magic of their personal and inspired choices to offer as much as they possibly can after thinking and cleverly considering their never-ending abilities. Thus, with two new singles which, more than only comforting us into their incredible gift of composing electronic music, they simply and amazingly help us admiring original prospects, and a complete reinvention of a genre which is their one and only media as well as their inner confession and power of exhibition. Perfect Drum and Anak first sound quite opposite but, in fact, significantly prove the incredible force of the London-based duet, before leaving us fascinated though exhausted, so much their capacity of a miraculous show of their identity also means questioning everything to find their incomparable and remarkable way.

In such a particular context, Different Drum sounds like an ideal transition between March of the Downtrodden and Anak, even if it also adds a further emotional strength to the previous track. Indeed, while using the same elements of creation as for their previous single, Ooberfuse take huge care of all elements of the song, bringing them to the edges of creation. Performing a complex and admirably melodic electro tune, they have made an amazing work on vocals, which immediately fascinates us. As multiple as clear and distinctive, they induce a deep and intense feeling of pleasure and peace, as well as a remarkable evocation of our inner strength and ability to shine and spread the word to others. More than simply encouraging all differences and originality from every human being, the band empowers its message through a musical shape while allowing rhythms to stand and fight for our desperate need to become and assume who we really are. Catchy and clever, Different Drum brings an unexpected, intimate vision of the composers’ style; a kind of a miracle indeed, as it is quite hard to do it thanks to machines and open people’s minds to such a concept, even if this successful attempt is a perfect introduction to the amazing new single Ooberfuse has given us.

There is a risk in covering a famous song, but the result here is above all that can be expected. While choosing to reinterpret a summit of music from the Philippines, Freddie Aguilar’s most famous song, Ooberfuse appropriates Anak, a wonderful chant from father to son. Subtle, peaceful and melodically exemplary, the brand new version from the band is more than a simple tribute; it is an expression of thankfulness as well as a need to come back to the roots of musical creation. Both moved by the evocative strength of the original track, Hal and Cherrie bring their own mood and talent, their proper originality, with a deeply moving humility, as if all previous and successful attempts from them were meant to lead to the apparent conclusion of a cycle, to intimate and universal greetings that come out of the incredible video shot where this magnificent masterpiece was born. The duet offers us a sincere and communicative gift through their own experience; but also, a suprising and really fascinating one. The journey they have chosen to go for since they have begun making music together thus becomes an admirable, human quest, an aquatic and cosmopolitan dance around an inspiring fire. As unforeseeable as intense, Anak is eternally full of warm tears and respect.

Admiting that we all are waiting for Ooberfuse‘s future works is quite an euphemism; their music is amazingly sensitive and significant and, through these two new songs, it has reached a point of no return. Meaning, we expect greater and more incredible moments with them, again and again.

Most of the time, when one thinks of contemporary arts, all seems pretty obscure or difficult to get to; it is even sometimes characteristic of snobbery, so that most people tend to ignore what is the most important meaning of pictural and visual works: feelings and thoughts about all that is offered to the eyes. Without always searching for a precise sense, one can only stand in front of a sculpture, a painting, but also in front of oneself thanks to this specific media, close to one’s apprehension, without looking for causes and consequences or any kind of subliminal message. So is the exhibition of the artist’s talent: it is an entire source of meditation and understanding of the emotion itself. US creator James Day’s masterpieces easily prove it: he takes us for a safe journey into receiving all that his magnificent illustrations are giving us. It is a global idea of contemplation and caress of our minds to lead us to the strong desire of having a physical contact to touch shapes, textures and perspectives.

Considering himself as a post-cubism artist, James Day can be seen as a much more superior maker. Because the artistic genre he depends on is simply a source of expression that he uses to develop brand new ideas and give birth to amazing choices. Thus, the creator’s talent is obviously subjective, exploring many cultures that he has decided to meditate on through sculptures, colors and desires. How can anyone not be thinking of Indian-American relics while watching Dreaming and Historic Spring, two standards of an original language he is giving us? The maker also gets free to discover his own capacity of communication: lines and central elements are out of focus and isolated to value a blurred but pure vision of the complete work, and lead the eye on primordial details. Life Cycle In An Abstract World evolves diagonally and mysteriously, while the picture and all its inner elements are both as important as the figure itself. Instead of exaggerating distorted shapes, James Day draws lines to improve a fascinating and meticulous care for point, color and moving shadows. The circling visions then replace straight lines and erase any symmetry to let us admire each contour and appearance of the real hallucination he is confronting us to.

The idea of an everlasting cycle is constantly introduced in James Day’s global concept. More than only offering a humanly powerful graphic meaning and an incomparable texture in his work, he invokes repetitive phenomena as well as a strong need for isolation, an urge to be artistically and publically alone. Life Cycle is a perfect sum-up for both human faces each one of us is daily confronted to, and the vital phases we travel through in a lifetime, from awakening to death. Such gradual but deeply harmonious curves of bodies and minds are marvelously significant once we need to understand and analyze the numerous answers that we all can reach only by contemplating all that is surrounding us. As anyone needs to focus on the admirable wide range of the artist’s capacities, one has to accept a perilous but exceptional journey, an initiation confronting us to a mirror reflecting our own experience and deforming our soul’s most representative characters and self-insurance before facing sincerity and tearing out our so-called knowledge in order to reconstruct it. The affective spiral we see is now a way to the truth, where we rest and think before drowning in it. Totally assuming both sides of a human being, James Day offers them to a reactive audience and provokes a knee-jerk reaction for everyone involved.

There is much to say about James Day‘s magnificent and intemporal masterpieces. But, above all, one has to admire his passion and constant wish to artistically pass a true vision of mankind on everyone of us.

One of the numerous listening pleasures for every amateur music critic, one of the most interesting though quite destabilizing parts of such a pleasant job lies in the fact of hearing albums about to be immediately considered as radically unclassifiable. As tracks play one by one and none of them sounds influenced by any other existing band, or like a useless attempt to perform the same tunes as well-known entities, nothing can soil the perfect experience one finds in this incomparable ecstasy. Thus, discovering such an LP is exciting; because, from the first tones, one understands that it is a major exception ready to pollute one’s brains, stimulate neurons and cause an incredible urge to know more. Missiles of October is part of these weird creators who are able to blur marks and perfectly express their proper furry. Their new record, Don’t Panic, is quite undefinable, so much it is more than original and powerful. It is then impossible to admit that there will be something before and after this masterpiece: it is unique, mysterious and deeply addictive, and this is all you need to know about it.

In such a case, it is hard and dispensable to try admitting that the band is playing one particular genre, but, on the contrary, one has to consider how they are apart from any style and able to affirm their captivating and innovative art. This main, undeniable fact can be heard from the first seconds of Don’t panic; far from any useless rock or brainless punk music, the trio takes care of its guitar riffs, carving them in one’s flesh and performing them within a huge and devastative dimension. As they let a constant inner violence caress the shapes of striking and percussive songs (Wannabe, Dead body), they also crush into fragile, hidden skeletons in their respective closets, destroying them thanks to heavy and explosive sounds apart from any relevance. Pleasure goes straight to the heart and mind before knocking us out and provoking a desire to feel one’s brain being pressed into a frenzy but clever and meticulous vice, defining a phenomenal though exhausting form. There is no space for air or a good rest here (Two feet in sludge) as an out-of-control melody stream roller is driven to tear all muscles and skulls to pieces (Cheerleader). The record stands for an exponential rise to chaos; it is a burst of mixed blood and sweat disorienting us, going faster and faster, free but perfectly lead to the infernal depths of infection and contamination of our souls.

The inner wrath contained in the album immediately appears to be the most striking element of all songs from Missiles of October. Wrongly supposed to be structured in harmony, the band’s effort is a false moment of calm before the storm, when the most intense ideas are deconstructed through perfectly performed screams, ready to complete all tracks (Music for hangover, Become an asshole). One thus listens to Don’t panic with an oppressive but brilliant impression that eyes are about to explode, ears to be smashed to bloody bits, and bodies about to rot. The experience here is physical, improving and intense without ever being boring. All is indeed progressively, slowly injected to better penetrate all vital organs and pry into them, or crawl under the skin and invade every cell. One is confronted to a baptism of fire where the only way to feel the amazing energy, keeping one’s veins boiling, is being entirely consumed. Whereas others would only have created messy pieces of music, the composers spread their virus so it disorientates us, though without becoming a nauseous and painful waste of time. The convincing strength of the LP lies in such an undeniable fact: whatever we do, it is inconceivable to try escaping the noisy and calculative tidal wave it truly is. So, let us take a long breath before going back down with an insatiable need to enjoy it.

Don’t panic is a visceral, primitive and devilish, alive and barbarously addictive album one has to hear before the end of times.

The musical frontier between post-rock and ambient tunes is quite thin, if not unreal. While listening to bands or artists performing these two not-so-different styles, one could easily say that they first look the same before swinging to one side or another. This apparent radicalization of a conscious choice of harmony can immediately be heard if musicians do not clearly understand how tiny the limit is, and that the thread between both genres can consequently break if they forget about it. The only reasonable decision, apparently, would be either choosing to let guitars explode or giving up every rhythmical or overdriven sort of aggression to appease the global sound of every track. However, Elskavon has decided to prove, thanks to his new album, that allowing the two opposite sides of aerial music to join in a single source of inspiration and work, thus concluding in a fantastic and federating result, can be reached. His gamble seems quite risky, as he has to go further the ethereal parts of his previous LP while exploring new melody ways of creating at the same time, without losing his mind. But he perfectly and admirably succeed in it, in many amazing ways.

Reveal is made of original and wonderful dilemmas, and clever solutions to solve them. While deciding to let the whole album shine in a free environment where every instrument gets its own, primary place and responsibility in all the events that are happening in our minds and ears, Elskavon reconciles all contradictory moods, and purely and simply invents a new form of artistic language. The first tracks are indeed made of so much beauty and delicate intensity that they could be heard in any actual pop record (Imprints and Letting Go could be perfect introductions to a Coldplay song); but the composer still develops a phenomenal ability to unite opposite genres by combining Brian Eno’s ethereal tones (Behind Narrow Eyes) with sweet and sensitive guitars and percussions, and then letting deeper moments close to This Mortal Coil’s (April Rain) or Labradford’s (Linn) soft delicacy melt into each other. Nevertheless, all these influences are only deforming mirrors of the musician’s capacity of experimentation; notably because of his captivating need of quiet but remarkably essential rhythmical and inverted loops leading to a brand new way of understanding art from another world. Further more than a simple attempt to materialize his numerous ideas, Chris Bartels unleashes all fibers from a common, sublime harmony canvas to realize his own masterpiece.

All the mystery surrounding the record finds its answers through the magnificent track Wishes, a quiet and almost carnal moment when piano talks and gets its central place in the whole work of the composer. Slow and only supported by discrete synths waves, the instrument travels through the limbs and becomes intimate before taking us to the undiscovered lands of Elskavon’s inspiration. As night falls after sundown and tunes fly in front of our teary eyes, all shapes change and evolve, our entire vision of the LP and the reality of the universe we are in melt into quiet times. The piece is a perfect overture for the final one, Solitude, a revelation oscillating between subtle electro and deliquescent blues tones. These two amazing instants create a subliminal ecstasy, a pleasure in loneliness that becomes obvious and necessary. Reveal is an incomparable LP; it is from another space, it shines and reflects pure humanity. One touches its core as if sweetly and sensually caressing one’s skin. One lets it languorously spread its warmth. But, above all, it is a work one has to respect; like a fragile statue no one dares to touch, like a wax figure about to break and that one cherishes and protects so it can never be damaged. It then becomes our most precious treasure, and the unique object of all our sacred feelings.

Reveal is the most important companion one can have at one’s side on the long road to the intimacy of existence. It is a candle comforting us, never going out and shining into the darkest halls of our lives.

From the end of the 1990’s, electronic music has constantly been evolving and still does, as no one can possibly imagine that it will end someday in case both audience and creators would get bored or uninterested by it. Even if present and future are made of a certain need fom immediacy and urge, a desire to quickly sort things and feelings out, rock is back from its ashes and from years of too arranged and clean textures defying its proper definition. In the meantime, emotion and hours of listening to different, sweeter and darker sounds, once made popular thanks to bands like Boards Of Canada or Massive Attack, still haunt the listener’s wanderings about a primary desire to find excitement in laziness, or ecstasy in glitches and synths waves bringing their souls close to the human psyche. After 13 long years, Danish trio Future 3 is finally back with one simple goal: dreaming and allowing us to get impregnated by their deep, evocative and aerial tracks. Their new LP, With And Without, is obviously sublime and intelligent, but also contains a dark side bringing a more passionate mood to the continuity of their art.

It is thus quite hard to imagine how a simple album manages to reveal such a troubling dichotomy through its own language. Far from only splitting songs from instrumentals, the bands also separates the different ways of understanding the whole record, little by little. With And Without is a slow way down, a transition from light to mist, from certainty to a complete loss of marks. First angelic, all pieces go from a male point of view (thanks to Orcas’ Benoît Pioulard’s vocals) to a female one (with songs featuring Anja T. Lahrmann), both suitable to create a distance between genres; then, as Mmn and Revenants manage to appease us by sailing on the same seas as Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LaValle, Signature, Roller Coasters and Seen are reassuring, electro and downtempo tunes containing a more artificial mood that increases their straight impact while progressively taking us close to the edge without ever going irremediably down, and never wanting to. Brightness comes out of each melody and is magnified through Fair and August, two masterpieces of surreal and fascinating humility, before fading out side by side with harmony, as lights softly die out.

Going from the shadows and the disappearance of the real world to gain knowledge, one goes through different stages of decompression and an inescapable, cold and automatic passage in the purification of bodies. Introducing melancholy that is about to happen in a calculative way, O/A and Camphor are like guardians of decontamination as well as lighthouses in the rain. One listens to the last three tracks of the LP as if they were the origin of the saddest grief; after confidence comes the terrifying absence, the loss of someone, the awareness of the missing one. With And Without takes the sorrow out of us, provoking a necessary loneliness of the soul to search for the ones who are gone and contemplate the empty chairs they have left in front of our eyes, while we do not accept this dreadful reality. Trmbns and Return enlighten the moment when one wishes for the soul of the disappeared to come back, the lapse of time when resignation swallows hope, and introduce the long last complaint of the album, Figure, which ends up getting us in a violent but terribly magnetic and emotionally admirable semi-consciousness. With only 12 tracks, Future 3 brings a meteoric and exceptional experience to life, a road to redemption that has never been crossed before.

With And Without is a masterpiece of nostalgia as well as an incomparable, purifying work of art. One will never be the same after listening to it, over and over again.

Seemingly off-putting for some of us, boring for others but, most of all, devilishly heady for its fiercest fans, minimal electro music has an inner capacity not to let people indifferent to it. Without any average opinion or allowing any reason to doubt of loving or hating it, it is a common source of extreme reactions. Thus, one’s fear of it equals the others’ addiction; either it appears to be a kind of senseless or uninteresting form of art, or it is a terribly mesmerizing and catchy mood which is perfect for dancefloor parties or possessed trance once the lights go out. Nekro’s tracks are a perfect illustration for both of them, for many reasons: the composer constantly looks for the most interesting samples to initiate surprise and motivation, helping legs and bodies shake as well as brains, while playing frank and straight, mechanical and artificial structures. For three years, he has been taking us to the calculative and convincing meanders of his inexhaustible imagination.

Nekro composes music as one would fix all the inner workings of a delicate but impressive clock. He always tends to find the most natural and less complex rhythms (Syntax) to better adapt astonished loops of melodic or out-of-tune samples. One could possibly admit that his sounds are a kind of progressive electro experience: thus, such a continuity can be found in the work he has been doing since 2011 but, moreover, in the endless selection of every harmony example he has been giving us. Cutting tunes to the core to bring a subtle light through elemental tones (Grunge Boy), he decorates extracts from multiple themes that first sound anachronistic (Nyan, Do That Tyler) but soon reveal their primordial importance. Synthetic bass gets united to the swaying shapes of clean and obsessive noises (Diamonds, Jet Set Future) before taking us into hypnotizing and classy atmospheres (Frantic!, Resistance featuring Lapin Lover). The clever, impulsive intelligence of the creator then grows bigger and more intriguing, sweeter and more impressive. Basically, when one goes back in time to consider his whole career, one notices that all tracks have been made cleaner and efficient while being put, little by little, on an essential, sensual and incredible energy close to deep house and remixing influences (Cemetery Courts, Matafact). More than only reinventing his work, Nekro endlessly aims to find perfection in his technique and inspiration by preciously using the musical weapons he has especially built.

Thus, the composer’s technologic music gets a subjacent human concept, a thin and sensitive impulse taking us far away from the kind of music that is usually done with this genre. First paying attention to the rough and main essence of the artistic archives he wants and needs to explore, he tears apart their inner source to rock and motivate our souls. Continually balanced between musical foundations and a percussive, robotic urge, he conceives metallic entities before, precisely, giving birth and conscience to them, then modifying every circuit by plugging a sensationally creative and magnificently thought electricity current. Using short but increasing keyboards, he humanizes hydraulic systems from his tracks, starts them so they can live and conquer. First slow but soon toxic, all songs spread like a virus ready to become malignant, infecting muscles and synapses to bring the first, uncurable symptoms on frenzy and submitted bodies. Nekro simplifies in order to captivate; instead of exaggerating arrangements, he perfectly and scrupulously injects the multiple pieces of his own harmony language to immediately allow us to feel the work of unity and constancy he has done, so we can only and totally hail his inventive and daring approach.

Nekro invites us to a radical but incredibly smart and self-willed experience. No doubt it will reconcile sceptics to machines.

Sometimes art is desperately in need of originality to prove that, first, its creators have a constant interest in giving their own opinion about life and, also, what their preoccupations and desires truly are. It is a message for some of us and a confession for others, but it is always a deliverance made possible by the true, intense wish to give value to images and sounds, as long as people agree and focus on the subjects they are introduced to. Because, as for every language, it first seems easy to understand; but it would be too restrictive to make no subject of the artists themselves, the ones who are the basis of the work, their daily lives, their passions, their inspirations and questions. Art is a reflection of questions that invoke the pleasure to explore multiple universes given, as for Flaviyake. Because, more than only performing refreshing electro and pop tunes and exciting one’s brains, she talks to us and exposes an impressive and incredibly relevant speech about the world she lives in. Her songs thus are, separately and concretely, personal and autobiographical stories, but also confessions about her passions and worries.

Thus, one has to admit that the artist’s electro tunes are quite complex. Digging into harmony and constantly changing them track by track, so that one never feels like listening to the same song again and again, Flaviyake finds inspiration in jungle, ethereal tones (Celestial Cutie, Because I’m A Doll) or heady and rhythmical moments (Electronic Boy, Street Of Roses (Street Of Weed)). Using keyboards and sounds to give them almost palpable textures, she explores every essence and perfectly aims to discover multiplicity in simplicity, in order to offer us regularly moving, clever and not-so-innocent songs. She goes from clubbing (Musical Vibes) to a dense and well-arranged pop mood (Angelic Song) or trip-hop (Londonight, Moonlight), getting filled by each ambience and thoughtful of all the ideas that are valuing her mutating and impressive vocals. Music is taken to its most secret and delicious intensity while being performed with discrete and soft effects. And, if anyone thinks her music could stand for a few more emotions and impressions, one has to listen to the three acoustic tracks contained on Celestial Cutie EP, where this fabulous creator reinvents her art only with a small piano and her remarkable sense of singing.

But the most captivating part of Flaviyake’s important work can be found in her own concept of global art and its meaning for the performer she is, with all that it tends to. Above the visual part of her physical shape, which is an obvious tribute to nowadays pop culture, she uses all possible means of communication to talk about all the serious subjects that she endlessly thinks of and feels about, thanks to her admirable, impressive and deep vocal timbre. She then exposes her thoughts on the videogame industry and its consequences for mankind, japanime and geeks, ecology and the way the worldwide youth has been given no power to express itself while it is in need to do so. And her courage grows into herself and the incredible gift of her own image, staging her shape to become a perfect, actual icon; as people stare at her as if she was a woman-child, she uses this vision to bring innocence to right in front of our eyes, in order to awake us and make us be aware of the world we live in, showing her vision of a society ready to fight for its rights by regaining its long lost ideas of a better place to evolve. Meticulously, she understands every opportunity to create and tell us about everything that surrounds and suffocates us. She acts and sings as if her life depends on it; she introduces us to her intimate show where sketches of her wanderings, abilities and modern, intelligent points of view are an infinite amount of subjects to help us find ourselves and breathe again despite the stormy days we all daily go through. Thanks to her, pleasure is the origin of changes, which she smartly offers us and, through her concept, makes us feel respect and admiration for her incredible efforts.

One immediatly has to go for Flaviyake; and, of course, one has to follow her, whatever she does in the future. Her entire work is admirable and subtle, which is a pretty impressive phenomenon, and an experience to enjoy before giving her back what she really deserves.

What about images we see during our childhood and adolescence? What do they truly mean once we become adults, as they are still in every memory, remaining there and helping us find who we really are? What about our remembrances and regrets when they finally come to life in front of our fascinated eyes and emotional bitterness? They melt into melancholy, invoking the fear of not having done all we were supposed to do. But, on the opposite, marks change and get as heavy as necessary. And, with them, melody appears to be a symbol of clairvoyance and silence, of meditation and comfort. Hearing Abstract Aprils’ music means considering it as a remnant of slow motion camera movements and looks. It also encourages us to reach the summit of evocative and moving ambient music. Blossom End, thus, is the perfect soundtrack for our mental blanks, our false steps and inactivity; it is a record that has to be understood without being judged, and that implores without reproaching anything to anyone.

Traveling across the seas that Brian Eno still explores (Breathing Sculptures), Blossom Ends is made of moments close to the 1980’s new age music, but with no excessive or commercial intention. The most important element of the record is a constant desire to illustrate, thanks to various and admirable soundscapes, the remnants of past moments and time that people have forgotten. Perfectly mixing both hope and sadness, Abstract Aprils bows before amnesia, cries artistic tears through a moving piano (Raw As Diamonds) or water guitars (Gravity, These Moments Live) before modeling harmony and creating a meticulous, sublime and serious introspective vision (At This Point), calling discrete, echoing and delicate electronic rhythms to succeed (Daring Remedy, Krystalucent). Modernizing tones that Labradford has offered us 10 years ago while using an Icelandic-influenced musical palette reminding us of Sigur Ros (Blossom Ends, Jackie), the composer is taking huge care of details, cleaning all asperities on tracks that are like enlightened, warm precious stones and diamonds. The record then is a refreshing mist before a heat wave, every cold drop caressing one’s body and hydrating one’s mind and reptilian brain.

Thus, the inner power of the album to evoke landscapes and turmoils lies in a simple but efficient, impressive and minimalist purpose: Abstract Aprils’ music is remarkably cinematic and visual. It is impossible not to think of Atticus Ross’ brilliant arrangements on The Book Of Eli soundtrack but, above all, David Lynch’s blessed intimacy and genius with Twin Peaks. As a perfect follower of Angelo Badalamenti’s atmospheric experiences, the creator travels through the limbs of mystery and revelation, then questions silence and the unsaid. Hiding multiple details that can help one understanding the whole LP, he leaves all the keys to his world so that one, while taken to an out-of-time and lonely quest, does not try to catch everything at once and lets oneself be carried along peaceful rivers or on mountain trails, as every single element of this melody road contains an impressive amount of secrets that one has to contemplate and unveil. Then, an immediate pleasure points to an incredible state of trance while modifying one’s stare at the world around and primary sensations. Instead of fearing any kind of desperate instant, one cleverly and quietly watches a perpetually moving universe, gets out of it to enjoy unforgettable minutes and hours listening to the record, rebirthing and diving into it again and again to get transformed without end.

Blossom Ends is a masterpiece of ambient music; because Abstract Aprils has understood, thanks to long hours of work and analysis, what it truly, deeply means.